This report explores the factors and conditions that could help more students succeed at school despite challenging socio-economic backgrounds. It does this by studying resilient students and what sets them apart from their less successful peers. Understanding how educational systems can support disadvantaged students and help them "beat the odds" to succeed in school is a central challenge facing education policymakers, school administrators and teachers today. This report provides a rich descriptive picture of resilience across a large number of countries. It shows that in all countries, disadvantaged students have the potential to overcome their economic and social disadvantage and to perform at levels similar to their more advantaged peers. The findings also confirm that disadvantaged students have the potential to become the leaders of the future and that socio-economic disadvantage can be overcome with the right set of circumstances and incentives. While the data do not allow causal inference, the results highlight key differences between students who beat the odds and those who do not. Most notably, resilient students generally have more positive learning approaches and spend more time in regular lessons at school than other disadvantaged students. These findings suggest that conditions that promote academic excellence among the most disadvantaged youngsters can be established. Annexed are: (1) Defining and characterising student resilience in PISA; (2) A profile of student resilience; (3) Closing the gap? Enhancing the performance of socio-economically disadvantaged students; (4) Conclusions and policy implications; and (5) Technical notes. (Contains 19 boxes, 26 figures, 69 tables and 2 notes.)